L'Osservatore RomanoTHE 'HYPERMODERN'
FOE
How the Evangelicals and Catholics Joined Forces

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

In 1960, the last time a Roman Catholic ran for president on
the Democratic ticket, evangelical Protestant leaders warned
their flocks that electing John F. Kennedy would be like handing
the Oval Office to the Antichrist.

So deep was the antipathy toward Catholics that the president
of the National Association of Evangelicals sent a distressed
letter to pastors saying: "Public opinion is changing in
favor of the church of Rome. We dare not sit idly by - voiceless
and voteless." The Rev. Billy Graham's magazine Christianity
Today said in an editorial that the Vatican "does all in
its power to control the governments of nations."

Forty-four years later, less than a fortnight in Christian
history, evangelicals and conservative Catholics have forged
an alliance that is reshaping American politics and culture.

Now another Catholic Democrat from Massachusetts, Senator
John Kerry, is running for president. But this time evangelicals
are cheering on the handful of Catholic bishops who have said
they will deny communion to politicians like Mr. Kerry who support
abortion rights. In an about-face, Christianity Today says in
a June editorial that it is "certainly appropriate"
for bishops to expect a Catholic president to submit to Vatican
authority.

More than political expediency is at work here. Once blinded
by suspicion, evangelical and some Catholic leaders have spent
more than a decade laying the groundwork for a religious realignment.
Though the old animus is not dead, there has been a rapprochement
with both moral and theological dimensions, and broad political
implications.

Coalitions of Catholics and evangelicals form the backbone
in the fights against gay marriage, stem-cell research and euthanasia,
and for religious school vouchers. Catholic and evangelical leaders
who forged relationships in the anti-abortion movement, which
the Baptist theologian Timothy George has called "the ecumenism
of the trenches," are now working side by side in campaigns
on other culture war issues, and for Republican candidates.

Catholics, once a solidly Democratic voting bloc, are now
fractured. Polls of the 2000 election showed traditionalists
and centrists breaking away to join conservative evangelicals
in voting for George Bush. "Voting groups are far more fluid
than they used to be," said Patrick Allitt, a professor
of American history at Emory University.

Mr. Allitt recalls seeing his glimpse of the new alliance
at an Operation Rescue anti-abortion rally in Atlanta in the
1980's.

Now conservatives in both groups share the sense that they
are fighting a losing battle against secularism, relativism and
a trend that the Christianity Today editorial brands "hypermodern
individualism." Though miles apart on salvation, they find
common ground in the language of moral absolutes. Evangelicals
have thoroughly adopted Pope John Paul II's language on the "culture
of life" to convey their anti-abortion principles. In a
recent poll of evangelicals, the pope had higher favorability
ratings (59 percent) than either Jerry Falwell (44 percent) or
Pat Robertson (54 percent).

"This is a phenomenal change from the days when the pope
was considered by evangelicals who were not on the fringe as
the Antichrist," said Rev. Richard Cizik, who handles government
affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals.

"There is many an evangelical now who believes that they
have more in common with the Catholics down the street than they
do with mainline Protestants," he said, a reference to the
Presbyterians, Episcopalians or Methodists, whose churches are
internally divided over homosexuality.

Evangelicals in past generations were once among the loudest
voices calling for separation of church and state, largely as
a defense against government financing for Catholic parochial
schools. But with evangelicals busy building their own private
Christian academies in recent years, they have joined forces
with Catholics to push for government vouchers for parents who
choose to send their children to private or religious schools.

Audiences of evangelicals and Catholics defied critics and
made "The Passion of the Christ" one of most profitable
films ever produced. Catholics regard the film as a thoroughly
Catholic spectacle, focused as it is on the Virgin Mary and Jesus'
suffering. Yet Mel Gibson, a traditionalist Catholic, built an
audience with screenings in evangelical megachurches, even hiring
Billy Graham's public relations man. Many evangelicals embraced
the movie as a way to strike a blow of their own in the culture
wars.

Even a decade ago, much of this would have been a surprise.
It is true that for Catholics, the Second Vatican Council in
the 1960's set the stage for Catholic acceptance of ecumenicism.
But the evangelicals still had a long way to go.

Exactly 10 years ago, a group of evangelical and Catholic
leaders and scholars released a document called "Evangelicals
and Catholics Together." It was the result of a dialogue
started by two men: the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic
priest in New York who edits the journal First
Things, and Charles Colson, the former Nixon aide who became
a born-again Christian while doing time for the Watergate cover-up.

Mr.
Colson said in a recent interview that he had reached out
to Father Neuhaus because he had admired a book by the priest,
"The Naked Public Square," which argued that public
life was slowly being stripped of the religious. The two men
convened a group of prominent theologians and religious leaders.
The evangelical side included the late Bill Bright, founder of
Campus Crusade for Christ, the religious broadcaster Pat Robertson
and theologians like James I. Packer. The Catholic side included
the late Cardinal John O'Connor of New York and the theologian
Avery Dulles, now a cardinal.

Their manifesto was primarily theological, but it included
overt political pledges to work together on issues like abortion,
government aid for religious schools and strengthening the "traditional
family," in part a reaction to the growing gay rights movement.

The document shook the evangelical world. "Friendships
and institutions were blown apart," Father Neuhaus recalled
in an interview. One hundred evangelical leaders signed a statement
denouncing it. Mr.
Colson said his organization, Prison Fellowship Ministries,
lost about a million dollars in contributions. He received more
than a dozen letters a week from angry evangelicals.

But over the next several years, the letters stopped. By 2000,
Mr. Colson and James Dobson, the broadcaster who founded Focus
on the Family, were invited to the Vatican to address the bishops
on the breakdown of the family, the first such appearance ever.
Evangelical institutions like Wheaton College in Illinois and
Gordon College in Massachusetts began inviting Catholics to speak
on campus, Mr. Colson said.

Father Neuhaus said he has been among the Catholic leaders
urging bishops to publicly confront Catholic politicians like
Mr. Kerry who defy church teaching on abortion. The dialogue
group has continued meeting, and is at work on another statement
on the meaning of holiness. This is not to say that everyone
sees eye to eye. There is plenty of anti-Catholic residue among
evangelicals. Christian bookstores still sell books arguing Catholics
are apostates. The best-selling "Left Behind" series,
so popular among evangelicals, featured a distasteful Catholic
cardinal who assists the Antichrist.

On political matters, evangelicals and Catholics will not
fall on the same side of the divide on every issue. The Vatican
opposed the war in Iraq, while many evangelicals were hawkish.
And many Catholics still profess a strong social-justice, pro-union,
Democratic orientation that makes them natural antagonists of
evangelicals, who largely swing Republican.

Father Neuhaus confided, "There is much in the evangelical
culture that grates against me - the overly confident claims
to being born again, the forced happiness and joy, the awful
music."

But the alliance, he said, is "an extraordinary realignment
that if it continues is going to create a very different kind
of configuration of Christianity in America."

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